Yeah, yeah. I know I wrote a whole series on social media a few years back, so maybe I should go back and revise those posts. However, they were valid for the time and, for the most part, there’s still some useful stuff in there. That said, in the 7-ish years since I wrote that series, things have changed. Whether they’ve changed for better or worse, I dunno. I’m going to try to hold off on making any value assignments about it. I just know it’s different.
We build our own silos #
Don’t get me wrong. People are still socializing. We have a knack for doing that, often in spite of barriers, roadblocks, and other assorted stupidity that gets put in our way. But the shape of the thing has changed. In a lot of ways, we’ve re-siloed ourselves. We have our own little echo chambers where we can get our full fix of dopamine and confirmation bias. You have to actively work to see (or be seen by) people outside of these silos. And we’re lazy, so no one does that.
Now, before you go blaming algorithms or corporate blah-blahs… it’s more than that. Yes, the big social media platform businesses are tuned to show you what you want to see and keep you continually scrolling. But just because they’ve optimized that path, it doesn’t mean they’re solely to blame here.
Take Mastodon, for example. I love Mastodon. It’s open source. It’s decentralized. It’s even federated, much like the beloved internet of old. But each Mastodon server is subject to the whims of the person (or people) in charge of administering the thing. It’s their space and they control the content on the server, the people who can register, and also which other Mastodon servers they choose to associate with by way of federation. This is an open and free platform where people are willingly walling themselves off from other parts of the same platform.
We build our own silos. I pains me to say this, but as much as we humans have a knack for building communities and social groups despite barriers, we also have a pretty impressive knack for building those barriers when none existed before.
The good news is that there are signs that this is cyclical behavior. I’ve been on the internet a looooong time. I’ve seen BBSs, Usenet groups, private forums, public forums, all manner of chats from IRC to instant messaging, blogging in all its forms… hell, who else remembers friggin’ web rings? There’s a certain ebb and flow to all of this. Each of these things has gone away and been reborn in another way. We silo ourselves. Then we decide that we need outside perspective. Then we see our shadows and crawl back into our holes. Social winter is here and it’s going to be sticking around for a while. But in time, I’m hopeful that things will thaw out again.
What am I doing? #
In the meantime, I’ve had to figure out what I’m going to do with social media. And since this is my website, I can turn the focus back on myself. For the last year or so (maybe longer), I’ve been pretty “radio silent” on all the social channels I’m registered with. Some of that is because I’ve just been really busy. But a lot of it has been related to dealing with what I’ve written in this post.
Quite frankly, if I weren’t actively trying to monetize each random project I take on, I probably wouldn’t be on social media at all. In fact, my first social media account was literally foisted upon me by someone who understood early that social media was always a tool for marketing, whether it’s a “personal brand” or a business.
So I’m returning to those roots… and I made myself a set of new rules for how I’ll be treating social media for the foreseeable future. I actually made an image of this and posted it on most of the social networks I’m a part of (it’s also the header image for this blog post). Of course… it’s text, so I may as well write it out here. Let’s do it:
Social media house rules #
Social media isn’t social anymore. It’s just media. Therefore, that’s how I will treat it.
- I only post about what I like. Sharing what you’re against is stupid.
- I’m probably gonna try to sell you things.
- Reactions are meaningless.
- You’re going to disagree with me. You’re allowed to be wrong. So am I. Public debate is useless.
- I reserve the right to change my mind.
That’s it. Short. Simple. Hopefully clear. Let’s see how well I can stick to that.
And maybe—just maybe—this means I’ll be updating this site more frequently. (See? Optimism!)